Tinderbox: Babri, Riots, and the Bombay Blasts of 1993
In March 1993, Bombay-India's financial capital-was shattered by a series of coordinated explosions that marked the arrival of modern urban terrorism in the country. But the blasts did not emerge in isolation. They were the violent culmination of decades of political tension, sectarian polarization, underworld expansion, and state failures.
This book presents the most comprehensive historical reconstruction of the period from the late 1980s to 1993, tracing how the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the ensuing nationwide unrest, and the Mumbai riots of 1992-93 created a volatile environment that was exploited by criminal syndicates, hostile foreign actors, and radicalized individuals.
Drawing on documented evidence, official reports, the Srikrishna Commission, trial records under TADA, eyewitness testimonies, and historical scholarship, Tinderbox follows the chain of events with scholarly precision. It examines the rise of the Bombay underworld, the transformation of Dawood Ibrahim's D-Company into a transnational crime-terror network, the radicalization of Tiger Memon, the involvement of foreign intelligence agencies, the logistics of smuggling RDX into India, and the intricate web of operatives who carried out the attack.
The book also studies the city's response: the chaos, the courage of ordinary citizens, the breakthroughs achieved by the Mumbai Police, the long and complex TADA trial, and the lasting socio-economic and political impact on India.
Anchored in rigorous historical method and elevated narrative style, this work confronts the communal wounds, geopolitical strategies, criminal underworld dynamics, and security lapses that converged to produce one of the darkest episodes in India's contemporary history.
Tinderbox is not merely an account of a terror strike. It is a study of a nation's vulnerabilities, a city's resilience, and the long shadow of violence that continues to shape India's security landscape.
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